playing poker and teaching science

About Me

I'm a middle school science teacher, wrestling coach, poker player, scuba diver, aikido black belt, amateur writer, and student of life. In the past I have tried to give back a little by volunteering at a children's home in Belmopan, Belize, Central America. I also love Frosted Flakes.
I have taken a year sabbatical from my teaching position in order to sail the Caribbean. Does that sound crazy to you?

Monday, May 28, 2007

Summer's coming!

Summer is quickly approaching and a school teacher’s thoughts turn to the 79 days off in a row that I spy on the swiftly looming horizon. I don’t want to jump the gun here…. I have an additional day and a half to work still before the summer vacation officially begins!

The summer is going to be a little boring.

I’m taking off at the beginning of July and will be flying to Cancun and then hopping a bus south through southern Mexico and crossing over into Central America, eventually ending up in Belmopan, Belize.

Interesting bit of trivia: Belmopan holds the distinction of being the smallest capital city in the world with a population of only 12,000.

In Belmopan I’ll be volunteering at a children’s home that takes in orphaned and abandoned children from throughout the area. As you can imagine, those numbers go up every year and this children’s home is always running short-handed of help. I hope I can make a little difference there.

At the end of July I’ll re-hop the bus northward and seek my flight home.

Time to rest? Not a chance!

Upon returning from this trip I’ll be home for exactly four days before getting married to my sweet little IU gymnast (ok...ex-gymnast) and then boarding yet another flight out of the country, this time to Montego Bay, Jamaica. Get this: five nights, all-inclusive resort hotel with no negative comments on Travelocity OR Expedia, all booze and meals, WITH airfare for only $840 each. Not a bad deal. Unless a hurricane hits…. but what a story THAT would be!!!

My personal goal is to put them in the hole with copious consumption.

Oh yeah… I also put my house on the market and made an offer on a new house today so I'll be moving soon.

The summer is going to be a snoozefest…

POKER CONTENT

As far as southern Indiana casinos go, I’ve only played live poker at Caesar’s and there are several other casinos with poker rooms now so I’m going to drive down and play in each of them before my July trip. That's the plan at any rate.

The first is Belterra.

I played for about four hours at Belterra yesterday and had a very nice experience. I played at the $1/$2 no-limit hold em table ($100-$300 buy in) and walked away about $90 up playing against some very nice men who were more than happy to call down with second best. It’s a nice non-smoking poker room that I would recommend from my (single) experience.

It was a completely unremarkable game with two exceptions: I was dealt AJ suited in the big blind and flopped the nut flush, and I saw the player across from me get paid off after a HUGE bet at a $1/$2 table by a man holding two pair. The winner held a Royal Friggin’ Flush!!! AKQ10 of clubs on the board, he’s holding the jack (and incidentally the nine of clubs) for the nutty nuts and gets called by a man with AK offsuit.

Yikes.

Other than that I had no big suckouts, just tried to be patient and wait for good cards. It seemed like a good plan and worked well yesterday.

If you're in the area, give Belterra a try and keep tuning in here for other Indiana casina reports.